hessian messaging

The Hessian binary web service protocol can
provide a messaging service layered on top of its
RPC call. The messaging service itself is based on the standard
Hessian RPC call, so Hessian itself has no need to become more
complicated.

Each hop the message takes uses a simple send method to the
next server in line. The receiving service might be the final
destination or it might choose to send the message to another server,
making another hop. This architecture is essentially the same as the
standard SMTP mail architecture. SMTP is custom protocol
for each hop while RFC-822 specifies the meaning of the mail
headers.

We'll just be discussing the hop protocol,
i.e. the SMTP replacement. Any definition of the end-to-end headers
and routing would be built on top of the basic Hessian messaging.

This discussion shows that Hessian's RPC mechanism is sufficient
for handling messaging, without introducing any extra complications to
the Hessian protocol itself. By choosing a layered protocol model, each
protocol layer can be simple independent of the others.

Point-to-Point Messaging

The simplest messaging service receives text message to
a URL. With that messaging service, only the message object is used and
the headers are ignored. Many applications only need the most basic
messaging protocol. Until the application needs messages to be
forwarded and to have many middle servers, the simple use
case is sufficient.

The message service URL is the message destination.
This example might use http://foo.com/hessian/message/test-bean.
Since this sample service ignores the headers, there's no forwarding
of the message.

The Hessian packet does not need to contain the URL, since that's
specified in the containing enveloper. For example, when using
Hessian with HTTP, the HTTP request will specify the URL of the
Hessian service.

Sending a message from a Java client

An application can use any Java client which can send Hessian to the
message service. The standard HessianProxyFactory could be used.

Calling the messaging service from Java uses HessianProxyFactory
to create a client proxy. Once the client is available, the
application can just start sending messages.

Calling from a Python client

Since Hessian is language-independent, any scripting languages with
a Hessian implementation can send to a messaging service.
For example, the Python
Hessian library allows Python to send a message to a Hessian
message service.

Messaging with Routing

Routing parameters are contained in the headers map.
For example, Java's messaging service (JMS) defines a number
of routing headers. These headers could be used for more sophisticated
mail routing than point to point.

Defining the routing headers is beyond the aim of this page. The
important point to note is that the routing protocol is built on top
of the Hessian messaging service which is built on Hessian.
Hessian itself does not need to be complicated with the routing headers.

Conclusion

In some sense, this protocol is too simple. That's the point. By
designing the messaging protocol as a layered system, each layer can
be simple. So a simple messaging service will be easy, and
complicated messaging routing services are still possible.

Hessian can remain a simple RPC protocol with no complicated
routing headers.

The messaging service API can remain trivial so simple scripting
language clients can use it.

Sophisticated routing protocols can be built on top of the
messaging by properly defining the headers.